


Steve's List

by bell_yay



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Artist Steve Rogers, Bisexual Steve Rogers, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Gay Bucky Barnes, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Sexism, Period-Typical Transphobia, Pianist Bucky Barnes, Suicidal Thoughts, Trans Character, Trans Male Character, Trans Steve, Trans Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-27
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2018-05-16 12:11:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 14,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5828080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bell_yay/pseuds/bell_yay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve prefers to keep some things to himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Steve had always kept a list in his head of people who knew. He tried to keep it as short as possible. In fact, he had tried to keep it completely blank. But Bucky had always had a way of weaving himself into every inch of Steve’s life.

Even when they had first met, it had been because of Bucky getting his sticky paws all over Steve’s business.

“Hey, pick on someone your own size!” he’d said, catching the biggest boy by the collar and landing a solid blow on his nose. Steve snatched up his cap and hurriedly stuffed his hair back into it. He wondered if Bucky had seen.

Apparently not, because, once the bullies had scattered, Bucky merely turned to Steve, extended a hand, and said, “Hey, that goes for you too, kid. I’m Bucky.”

“Steve.” He gave the hand a tentative shake, still clutching the cap to his head. Bucky smirked and looked him up and down for injuries, his eyes coming to rest on the cap. Steve resigned himself to what was obviously coming and sighed.

“Hey, you go for the Dodgers?”

Steve’s eyes snapped open.

“What?”

“Nice cap. I go for the Dodgers, too. Catch the last game?”

Steve shuddered with relief. He sat on the swing next to Buck, and for once didn’t discuss his hair.

\--

The problem with being friends with Bucky was that he was very good at getting what he wanted.

Bucky had invited Steve over to his place for dinner tons of times. Steve had even slept over there once or twice. So, inevitably, the question was raised.

“Hey, Stevie, my folks are out of town for the evening. How about I come over to yours, huh? How about it?”

Bucky had an arm slung over Steve’s slight shoulders. He had been caught in the comfortable lull of listening to Bucky’s gentle chat. Out of Bucky’s mouth, Steve didn’t mind so much being called Stevie. Bucky didn’t wield femininity like an insult; his voice only suggested friendship and camaraderie, as well as something else just as pleasant that Steve couldn't place.

 _That_ wasn't the problem with Bucky's overall statement, then. It was that Bucky couldn’t come over to his house, never, he couldn't ever meet his mom, never ever, he couldn’t ever –

“Steve?”

“Uh. Don’t think that’s such a good idea, Buck.”

Bucky's concerned expression deepened, and he slowly retracted his arm.

“What’s this about, Stevie?” His voice was soft and concerned, and Steve groaned. He couldn’t keep saying no to Buck if he was going to talk like that.

“Do you not want me to see where you live, is that it? You guys poor or something? Steve, you know I ain’t gonna judge you about that. We ain’t so well off, either, you know that, right? I mean, we do okay, but – “

“It’s nothing like that, Buck,” Steve sighed. “Sure, you can come over.”

Bucky seemed unconvinced.

“You sure?”

“Just let me ask my mom, but yeah, it should be okay.”

“If you’re _sure_ , Stevie – “

Steve laughed and shoved Bucky’s shoulder.

“’Course I’m sure, jerk. I’ll go let mom know now, and I’ll let you know later.”

Bucky grinned and saluted.

Steve watched Bucky jog away in the direction of his own home with a shrewd smile before trudging in his own direction. He sighed and kicked up the dirt. This had been a bad idea.

\--

Steve nervously readjusted his cap.

“This it?” Bucky nodded towards a block of apartments and Steve nodded absently. He felt like he was on the edge of the implosion of the whole world.

Steve opened the door gently and ushered Bucky inside.

“We’re home, mom!”

“Oh, good! Dinner’s almost ready.” She stepped out of the kitchen, wiping her hands with a dish towel and smiling. She stopped dead in her tracks when she saw them. “Oh!”

She looked wide-eyed between Steve and Bucky, and then back at Steve, staring unrelentingly at his hat, his shirt, his pants. He cleared his throat.

“Uh, mom, this is Bucky.”

Bucky helpfully held out his hand.

“Nice to meet you, Mrs Rogers. Thanks for having me over. I’ve heard all about you from Steve.”

Sarah shook the outstretched hand while still staring openly at her, uh, _son_.

“ _Steve?_ ” she mouthed. Steve’s throat felt dry.

Sarah finally turned to Bucky and Steve was surprised by her genuine smile.

“Well, you certainly seem like a nice young man, Bucky. I’m afraid Steve hasn’t told me very much about you.” She turned her accusatory glance back onto Steve, but this time it seemed light and joking. Bucky laughed. The pair held up a friendly banter all the way through dinner.

Steve, on the other hand, couldn’t breathe.

\--

The next day, Steve was unusually chipper. Bucky smiled and narrowed his eyes.

“What’s got you in such a good mood, huh, punk?” he said, taking a seat next to where Steve was jovially swinging his legs and sketching. Steve stopped humming for a moment to grin up at Bucky.

“Just had a nice time last night, that’s all.”

Bucky felt a flush creep up the back of his neck, but beat it back down. He playfully jostled Steve’s shoulder, timing it so the movement wouldn’t ruin Steve’s work.

“You didn’t have to walk me to the door like some dame, y’know,” he joked. Steve stiffened briefly before barking out a laugh.

“I know, Buck.”

Steve kept drawing and Bucky kept following the hypnotic trail of his pencil, dancing round and round the page in ways that didn’t make sense to him.

“Y’know…” Steve began slowly. His pencil had stilled and he was looking deep into the middle distance, brows furrowed.

“What’s up, Stevie?”

Bucky expected Steve to shake himself off and laugh, the trace of a frown still there between his eyebrows, and claim it was nothing.

Bucky didn’t expect Steve to turn suddenly to look at him with such sincerity that Bucky’s breath caught in his throat and his pulse raced high up into his neck.

“Bucky, I just.” Steve looked bashfully away, giving Bucky the space to breathe. “Thanks. For last night, and for everything. It means a lot.”

Bucky blinked slowly and nodded.

“Sure thing. Not exactly sure what we’re talking about, but sure thing.”

Steve laughed, the one where his eyes all bunched up, and set back to swinging and humming and drawing.

Bucky followed the pencil.

\--

_ The List _

_\- Mom_


	2. Chapter 2

“Drop it, Buck,” Steve said, an edge in his voice that hadn’t been there before. Bucky chewed the inside of his mouth and tried to fight off a cheeky grin. He didn’t want to patronise Steve, he really didn’t, but the guy got defensive about the funniest things.

“C’mon, Stevie, you know I’m only kidding.” He gave the cap another flick and Steve shot him a glare. “Still don’t know why you won’t let me wear it, though.”

“We should really get home.” Steve sighed and scuffed at the railroad. Judging from the dim blue light painted over everything, they should have been home hours ago.

The pair had decided to follow the old railroad tracks, to see where they end, but they had gone on for longer than expected, and a combination of the summer heat and expecting Steve to have an asthma attack at any moment had left them both antsy. Steve had started arguing against almost everything Bucky said, and Bucky had started trying to see just how far he could take it.

Bucky knew that Steve was right, that they should get going. He looked down the deep ditch which stretched away from the railroad tracks.

Bucky couldn’t resist another jab.

“Let me wear it Steve, c’mon!” He made a joking reach for Steve’s cap and stumbled backwards in surprise when the smaller boy gave him a solid shove.

“I said back off, Buck!” he snarled, fixing the cap.

“Geez,” Bucky scowled, standing and brushing off the dust from the back of his pants. “No need to get violent, Stevie.”

“Don’t call me that,” Steve snapped. Bucky reeled. He caught what looked like a flash of guilt in Steve’s eyes, but it was quickly smothered by the grim set of Steve’s determination. “I’m going home.”

Steve turned to leave but Bucky was quicker.

“What’s going on, Steve?”

“Get off me!” Steve squirmed and shoved but Bucky was relentless. The pair tussled and turned until they tumbled right down the edge of the ditch.

“Jesus, Stevie.” Bucky sat up and clutched his dizzy head with a moan. “You alright?”

Bucky had a moment of panic when he struggled to find Steve’s slight form. He imagined it mangled at the base of the slope. It hadn’t been that far a fall, and they’d rolled most of the way, but you never knew with Steve.

Bucky breathed out a sigh of relief when he saw a small shape moving around in the darkness not too far from where he was sitting. He began to make his way over, but as he got closer, and as the figure came into better view, he suddenly became unsure.

A young girl with a messy mop of blond hair, strewn now with sticks and brambles, ran her hand through the grass, searching for something.

She had a Brooklyn Dodgers cap in her left hand.

“Steve?”

The girl looked up. She had Steve’s face, but it was frightened, and she flinched back like Bucky was going to hit her. He approached carefully.

“Steve,” he said again. She clearly responded to the name, her brows furrowed and cautious as Bucky squatted down next to her. “Steve, what’s going on?”

The girl moaned and ran a hand through her hair, covering her eyes for a good minute before she took a deep breath and revealed herself again.

“All my pins fell out when I rolled down that hill.”

Bucky blinked and she resumed her search in the grass.

“Pins?”

“Yes, pins,” she snapped. “I use them to keep my hair up.”

“I’ll get you some more pins.”

“Yeah, you better.”

“Steve.” She was still running her hand frantically through the grass, her hair shrouding her face. “Steve, look at me.”

The girl froze and Bucky took her head in his hands. He could see now that she was crying.

“Why do you pin your hair up, Steve?”

Steve sighed for a long time and then laughed bitterly.

“I’m not a girl, Buck.”

Bucky shrugged.

“Okay.”

Bucky took the cap gently from Steve’s fingers and put it back on his head, delicately tucking as many stray strands of hair into it as he could manage.

\--

“Why don’t you cut it off, is what I mean,” Bucky clarified as they walked back home later. Steve had opted to drape Bucky’s jacket over his head, as ridiculous as Bucky had told him it made him look. Bucky had finally got permission to don the cap.

“I don’t know,” Steve said. “I guess some people know me as a girl.”

“Did your mom?”

“Did my mom what?”

“Does she know about this?”

Steve laughed.

“Yeah.” He smiled wryly at Bucky. Bucky didn’t understand.

“My sister could cut it for you. She wouldn’t mind. Neither would my parents. I won’t tell ‘em, but you won’t have to worry about them walking in or nothin’ like that. Becca cuts my hair, so, if you like what you see – “

Steve laughed.

“Thanks, Buck,” he said sincerely. Bucky swallowed and looked away. “Maybe someday.”

\--

_ The List _

_\- Mom_

_\- Bucky_

\--

“How do you want it?” Becca circled around Steve, sizing him up while Bucky smirked in the background.

“I dunno.” He stared at himself in the mirror. “Short?”

Becca shot Bucky a glance and Bucky grinned and shrugged.

“I’ll give you something similar to Bucky’s, then,” she sighed. As she began to snip away, Bucky caught Steve’s eye in the mirror and gave him a thumbs up.

\--

_ The List _

_\- Mom_

_\- Bucky_

_\- Becca_

\--

Steve ran a hand through his new hair. It was a little messy, a little uneven, but, looking at himself in the mirror now, it was like he had become himself again. Ever since his shock with Bucky, he’d been a little unsteady on his footing, especially around mirrors, and especially about his hair.

He turned to Bucky and held his arms out from his sides.

“How do I look?”

Bucky made a show of inspecting the haircut before giving it a ruffle and his seal of approval.

Maybe Bucky knowing was going to be a good thing.

\--

Bucky blinked.

“You _what_?”

“I’m on my _period_ , Buck,” Steve gritted out.

“Uh.” Bucky blinked again. “How long has this been happening?”

Steve rolled his eyes and groaned.

“Not very long.”

“Do you need to,” Bucky hesitated, “talk about it? Because I can get Becca to – “

“ _No_ , Buck. It’s fine.” Steve winced. “My mom already had _that_ talk with me.”

Bucky nodded and turned away.

“There’s other stuff too,” Steve said, almost in a whisper.

Bucky turned back, worried.

“Like what?”

“I have -” Steve shook his head and started again. “My chest is growing now.”

“Oh.”

They sat in companionable silence.

\--

“Of course I know how to sew, Buck,” Steve said icily. “I have a vagina.”

Bucky frowned at the small form bent over the sewing machine and decided to let that one slide. He’d insisted that Steve stopped using bandages to bind his chest ages ago, and now that the punk was finally listening to him he wasn’t going to ruin it over some petty argument.

The sewing machine made an unpromising whirring sound and Steve cursed quietly.

Bucky knew that Steve was angrier at himself than he was at Bucky. He was angry at his body for turning against him like this. While Bucky had shot up in height over the past couple of years, Steve remained mediocre. Bucky was certain it had more to do with his poor health than any other factors, but Steve was unconvinced and hurt.

Steve had temperamentally pulled out his mother’s sewing machine once Bucky had walked in on him wincing as he reapplied his bandages. Bucky had literally slapped the new roll out of his hands and, after a short but heated argument, Steve had unhappily obliged.

Becca had drawn up some rough patterns for a fabric binder for Bucky to take over. She hadn’t been particularly happy about it, either, seeing as Steve wouldn’t let her get anywhere near enough to take measurements.

“Get your stroppy boyfriend to let you look at his boobs,” she’d said as she shoved the papers into Bucky’s hands.

Steve cursed again.

“Need any help?”

“I don’t think this is going to work.” Steve sounded exhausted.

“Becca said that maybe it would be better if she could get the right measurements,” Bucky began. Steve stared blankly at him over his shoulder, but he carried on unperturbed. “I could do it, if that makes you more comfortable.”

To Bucky’s surprise, Steve just ran a hand over his hairline and nodded slowly.

“Okay,” Bucky said, wide-eyed. “Okay then.”

Steve stood up and raised his arms. His breasts looked almost unnatural on his small body, like they were never meant to be there. Bucky took up the measuring tape and tried not to look.

\--

Becca looked from the page of numbers up to Bucky’s face, her mouth agape.

“He let you - ?”

“Yeah.” Bucky shoved his hands deeper into his pockets.

“Okay.” She set to work.

\--

Bucky was sitting at the bottom of the stairs when Steve came home. Steve hadn’t wanted any of the Barnes family at the funeral, and they’d complied with his wishes to an extent, but he guessed Bucky just couldn’t keep away.

He stood up quickly when he saw Steve coming.

“Hey,” he said, adjusting his jacket. He was dressed for the funeral, Steve noticed. It was… nice. Respectful. “I hope you don’t mind.” He followed Steve up the steps. “If you want to be alone, I – “

“It’s okay,” Steve allowed. Now that the funeral was over, and he had done his private grieving, he could do with the company. Bucky silently nodded.

“We looked for you after. My folks wanted to give you a ride from the cemetery.”

“I know, I’m sorry. I just… kind of wanted to be alone.” Steve hadn’t cried once during the service. He had waited until everyone had left, including the Barnes family car, before sitting in front of his mother’s grave and weeping until late afternoon.

He wondered how long Bucky had been waiting.

“How was it?”

“’Sokay. She’s next to Dad.” Steve was purposely avoiding the emotions in everything he said. Bucky seemed absent, like he wanted to talk about something else.

“I was gonna ask –“ he began.

“I know what you’re gonna say, Buck, I just – “

“We can put the couch cushion on the floor like when we were kids. It'll be fun. All you gotta do is shine my shoes, maybe take out the trash,” Bucky struggled to keep his tone light-hearted. Steve dug around for his key but Bucky was there first. “C’mon.”

Steve sighed deeply.

“Thank you, Buck, but I can get by on my own.”

Bucky glanced away for a moment.

“The thing is,” he lay a hand on Steve’s shoulder, “you don’t have to.” His eyes turned soft. “I’m with you till the end of the line, pal.”

Steve struggled with a small smile which Bucky returned before turning away and making his way back down the stairs.

“Hey, Bucky, wait.”

Bucky turned back around hopefully.

“I don’t really want to live with your whole family. I mean, nothing about _them_ , exactly, but. That many people.”

Bucky nodded and turned fully to face Steve, his stance wide and open.

“Right. So..?”

“So, what if it was just the two of us?”

Bucky tilted his head.

“Move in with me, is what I’m saying,” Steve clarified awkwardly. Bucky’s small smile returned.

“I’d like that.”

\--

_ The List _

_~~\- Mom~~ _

_\- Bucky_

_\- Becca_


	3. Chapter 3

Bucky spread a map of Brooklyn out on the table and Steve glanced up at it in confusion.

“What’s this, Buck?”

Bucky had one of the wildest grins on his face that Steve had ever seen.

“We’re gonna go somewhere safe, Steve.”

\--

“I thought you said this place was gonna be safe,” Steve joked, dabbing at his cut lip with the handkerchief Bucky had given him. Bucky didn’t even turn to look at him. He stomped up the stairs of the apartment building and wrenched their door open. It was only once it was closed behind them that Bucky started to yell.

“I can’t believe it, Steve, I really can’t.”

“They were being jerks, Buck –“

“Does it look like I give a damn?” Bucky turned suddenly. “We came out here so that you _wouldn’t_ get beat up. I should’ve known you were the one going looking for fights.”

“They deserve it, Buck. They need to get taught a lesson or two.”

“You’re not teaching them _anything_ , Steve, except that they can pick on little guys. What is this about, anyway? Is this some fucked up masculinity complex or something?”

Steve stilled.

“It’s got nothing to do with that, Bucky.”

“Oh, hasn’t it?” Bucky inched closer, ice in his eyes. “Well, it will have something to do with it when some guy goes for a crotch shot and finds nothing there.”

Steve gritted his teeth.

“Don’t.”

“This is a _safe area_ , Steve, but only if you aren’t going out there and purposefully picking fights with people. I don’t want to find you dead in some alley, okay? Or you permanently traumatized because some asshole touches you.”

“Bucky, I _really_ don’t want to talk about it.”

Bucky’s shoulders lost some of their edge when he looked at Steve’s face.

“I’m sorry, Steve,” he sighed. “It’s not just about that. What if you had an asthma attack in the middle of a fight, or –“

“I get it, Buck.” Steve gently shoved Bucky aside. “I won’t do it again.”

Bucky nodded without turning around. He heard the shower beginning to run and he dropped his head and sighed.

Of course Steve was going to do it again.

Steve had left the bathroom door open, so Bucky sat on the bed and half-heartedly tried not to watch Steve in the mirror. Bucky could tell that Steve was probably crying, where the tears could be washed away quickly and he could pretend they were never even there. He usually had showers when he was going to cry. He was scrubbing the dried blood off from around his nose, but Bucky could see fresher red trickling down his leg. Bucky sometimes thought he hated looking at it almost as much as Steve did.

Bucky rolled onto his side once the water turned off. He and Steve had moved to this apartment for a couple of reasons. It had been cheap, for one thing. It was also close to a couple of art galleries and music halls, which was great for the both of them. But most of all it was located right in the middle of the gay area of Brooklyn. Bucky had made the stupid decision of assuming that most of Steve’s scuffles were the result of guys thinking he was either a cross-dresser or a twink. He should have known that Steve was the one getting all righteously angry and throwing the first punches.

Bucky propped himself up on his elbows. Steve was drying his hair.

“Listen, Steve, I –“

Steve smiled at him sadly.

“I know.”

\--

Steve’s eyes readjusted so that he was looking at his reflection in the glass, his face superimposed over Uncle Sam’s.

“Hey, there you are!” Bucky came running over, umbrella bobbing in his grasp. “Lost you there for a minute.”

He followed Steve’s eyes, his mouth opening with a quiet “Oh.” They stood for a few moments before Bucky started tugging at Steve’s sleeve.

“C’mon, we should get home. You’ll catch a cold in this rain. Wish you’d stay under the umbrella, punk.”

“Bucky.” Steve was looking at the ground, brows furrowed. “Are you going to enlist?”

Bucky blinked.

“Uh, I dunno, Stevie. Depends.”

“Depends on what?”

“What you feel about that.”

Steve looked surprised, but nodded slowly.

“What about you?” Bucky playfully nudged Steve. “You gonna do your bit for America?”

Steve looked wistfully back over his shoulder at the posters they were passing.

“Maybe, Buck.”

Bucky was suddenly afraid.

\--

“I can’t believe it, Steve, I really can’t.”

Steve rolled his eyes and shrugged off his jacket.

“C’mon, Buck. What was I supposed to do? Just sit there?”

Bucky stared at Steve as though he’d grown a new head.

“That’s what I _asked_ you to do!”

“I don’t see what the problem is.”

Bucky threw up his hands.

“Do you know how worried I was when I came back out and couldn’t see you anywhere? I thought you’d gone and gotten yourself beaten up again.”

“Well, I didn’t, and here we are, so it’s all okay.”

Bucky shoved a finger at Steve’s chest.

“It’s _not_ okay. Don’t even try to pretend to me like it’s okay, because I can tell when you’re feeling like shit, and you were standing there looking pretty fucked over about fifteen minutes ago.”

Steve’s eyes shuttered. He hadn’t thought Bucky had really noticed, or maybe he’d thought that Bucky had mistaken his dysphoria for sheepishness.

Bucky had gone to buy some flowers for Becca’s birthday, and had made the mistake of leaving hay-feverish Steve sitting in front of an enlistment booth. When Steve had stepped up to the front of the line, the man had given him a sad smile.

“Nice try, ma’am. I appreciate your spunk.”

He’d held out a brochure for the Women’s Army Corps, but Steve had already walked away.

“What did you think would happen in there, Steve?” Bucky continued. “Did you think they wouldn’t notice? Even if you’d actually gotten past enlistment, there’s still a medical. They’re always gonna find out, one way or another, and I know that you’re gonna beat yourself up over it every time. You don’t need to _prove_ yourself this way.”

“Not everything is about that, Buck. Did you think that maybe I just want to fight for my country because I feel like it’s the right thing to do?”

Bucky rubbed his eyes.

“I know, but it’s always going to be a little bit about this, isn’t it? That’s just the way things are.”

“Bucky, I’ll get over it. It’s fine.”

Bucky’s whole body heaved.

“It’s _not_ fine, Steve, that’s the thing.” He took in a shaky breath. He couldn’t express to Steve how he felt; Steve would take it the wrong way. Bucky couldn’t stop imagining what would happen if Steve had somehow miraculously gotten into the army. What then? Steve’s little mangled body, bloody and trampled, at the bottom of some trench. And, though he wouldn’t admit it, it was times like these, times when Steve was overeager to run into some fight, that made Bucky all-too-aware of Steve’s body. Steve was a man, and always would be a man. Bucky couldn’t see him as anything else. It’s just that he was a man with a woman’s body. Add to that Steve’s terrible medical history, and Bucky couldn’t help but think that the battlefront was no place for a guy like him.

“I promise not to go to war if you don’t.”

Bucky glanced up between his fingers. Steve looked comically set on this bet, and Bucky couldn’t help a smile.

“Deal.”

\--

Bucky sat at their small dining table, moving his glass around like he was planning out a war.

He’d gotten a surge of confidence the evening before and taken Steve out for drinks. Now his head hurt a little and he wasn’t sure what Steve’s whole opinion was on the whole turn of events.

Steve watched him from the doorway, leaning casually against the frame with a concerned expression. He’d been a little surprised by the bar Bucky had taken him to. He’d seemed a little shy about introducing Steve, but it was clear that he was a regular there. As the night wore on and Bucky became more and more tipsy, Steve began to understand his friend’s hesitancy.

Bucky had looked at Steve with hooded eyes and told him he was perfectly safe here: he’d asked around. There were a couple others like him in that very room, in fact. Steve had opened his mouth to question but Bucky had already started rambling on about how he played piano there sometimes, and how well they paid.

A few times, some rather handsy men had to be slapped away from Bucky’s crotch.

“Hey, not now!” Bucky slurred angrily. “Can’t you see I’m with someone? Jesus. Sorry about that,” he said to Steve. Steve supposed it was the alcohol which made Bucky believe that this situation was, in any way, normal.

Now, Steve pulled out the chair across from his friend, making him wince.

“Uh, Steve, sorry about last night –“

“No worries, Buck. I had a nice time.”

Bucky raised his eyebrows and laughed.

“Not without me, I hope.” Bucky winced again. “Hey, uh. There’s probably something we need to talk about.”

“Yeah, probably.”

Bucky seemed pained on multiple levels. He drummed his fingers on the tabletop.

“Listen, uh,” he said to the bottom of his glass. “Do you, I dunno. Do you like dames?”

He suddenly fixed Steve with a meaningful glance and Steve felt his heartbeat speed up. He laughed nervously.

“Of course I like dames, Buck. I’m a fella, aren’t I?”

Bucky flinched back.

“Of course. Right.” He stood up and started to move towards the kitchen.

Steve could see a mistake when he made one.

“That’s –“ He knocked over his chair hurrying to catch back up to Bucky. “That’s not to say I don’t like fellas, too, Buck.”

Bucky paused and stared. Steve suddenly felt self-conscious.

“I hope that’s not a problem.”

Bucky slowly placed his glass in the sink and then leant down to touch his lips to Steve’s.

\--

“You sure you want this?”

Bucky had fallen backwards onto the bed and pulled Steve down on top of him. Steve scrabbled with Bucky’s buttons with increasing frustration.

“’Course I want it, Buck.”

“Just want you to be sure.”

“I’m sure.”

“Good.”

Bucky smirked at Steve’s spidery fingers working at his shirt.

“If there’s anything you’re uncomfortable with, just let me know.”

Steve smiled. When he’d suggested that he’d wanted this, Bucky had almost fallen over himself trying to make everything perfect. Looking at him now, a sweet lazy smile in the late afternoon light, he thought that Bucky had done a pretty good job.

Steve ripped Bucky’s shirt off with a victorious shout and Bucky laughed up in chorus. He wriggled his hips to settle them more comfortably.

“Now, are you _sure_ –“

“ _Bucky_.”

Bucky laughed, sneaking a hand under the hem of the shirt which Steve had elected to keep on and starting to stroke the wet tissue there.

“Just want to make you feel good, Stevie,” he purred. Steve sighed breathlessly and tilted his head back. Bucky tutted and pulled his chin back down. “I wanna see those baby blues, sweetheart. Let me see ‘em.”

Steve blissfully opened his eyes and Bucky grinned at him.

Definitely perfect.

\--

“Buck?”

Bucky hummed and rolled over, rubbing sleep out of his eyes. It was early morning now, and Bucky continued to look perfect in the light. Steve touched his arm. Bucky blinked blearily and smiled.

“Morning, Stevie.”

They smiled stupidly at each other for a while before Steve sighed.

“That was nice, last night.”

“It was,” Bucky smirked. “Want to go again?”

Steve frowned and Bucky sat up.

“Steve?”

“I’m not a dame, Buck.”

Bucky raised an eyebrow.

“I’m pretty sure we’ve had this discussion before.”

Steve groaned and covered his face.

“What I mean is, if _this_ is all just because I have a girl’s body, and that’s all this is doing for you, then I can’t do it anymore. I want to, but I can’t.”

Bucky looked thoughtful, laying on his back and looking out the window.

“Y’know,” he said eventually, quietly, “you aren’t the only reason I chose to move here.”

Steve didn’t fully understand what Bucky was saying until he rolled over.

“I like fellas.”

Steve blinked.

“Exclusively?”

“Exclusively.”

“Huh.” Steve thought about this for a moment. “But I thought you fucked Dotty Harvard in that back alley?”

Bucky raised a finger in protest.

“I _fingered_ Dotty Harvard in a back alley. There’s a difference.” Bucky got a cheeky smirk on his face before rolling onto his back. “Besides, I also let Billy Wickham fuck me about a week later.”

“Bucky!”

Bucky laughed and deflected the pillow aimed at his head.

“Wanna hear more about me and that alley?” he teased.

“I get the picture.” Steve looked like he’d been sucking on a lemon and Bucky laughed again.

“So anyway,” he said, once he’d caught his breath, “ready for round two?”

\--

Steve must have thought Bucky was stupid to pretend like Bucky hadn’t realised that he had been sneaking off to enlistment booths every other week. He came back looking worse and worse every time, but always passed it off as just being tired and stressed. It drove Bucky up the wall.

And now Steve was angry at _him_ for enlisting.

“You promised, Buck.”

“I didn’t promise anything. _You_ promised that you wouldn’t enlist if I didn’t. I guess now I’ll have to keep my mouth shut if you want to go off to an enlistment booth.”

Steve glared daggers.

“Listen, Steve,” Bucky sighed, “do you know the kind of pay-checks we’ll be getting from this thing? We could live comfortably for a little while.”

Steve rolled his eyes. They’d had this conversation before, when Bucky started working down at the docks. They both knew they weren’t making enough money, between Steve’s freelance illustration and Bucky’s work as a pianist, but Bucky had been the one to finally bite the bullet and get a job that fed them.

It had upset Steve when it happened. He knew that part of the reason they had moved to this area was because it was meant to be artsy, and his illustration work wasn’t going too badly, and Bucky had work most weekends, but it just wasn’t enough.

“You’ve always wanted to be a pianist,” Steve had said. Bucky had shrugged.

“And I was, for a little while. It was fun, Stevie, but now I need a real job.”

Steve hated that Bucky acted like it was perfectly fine that Steve kept living his dream job when Bucky had to give up his. He hated that Bucky was the bread-winner, that Steve was just some dead weight who pulled the bills up.

He hated that Bucky was leaving.

“What am I going to do without you here?” he said suddenly, softly, sadly. Bucky looked alarmed, at first, but it morphed into something more bittersweet as he laid his hand over Steve’s.

“You’ll keep drawing, like always,” he said. “You’ll just be holding down the fort till I get back, that’s all. I’ll make sure all the money’s sent back here to you, and you can take care of it all for us, huh?”

Steve gritted his teeth.

“I don’t wanna be a housewife, Buck.”

“It’s not like that, Steve,” Bucky groaned. “And, besides, there’s heaps of stuff you can do back here. They need all the help they can get.”

“I’m a fighter, you know that.”

“Not a very good one.”

Steve sighed and rubbed his eyes, before sending Bucky a sad smile.

“I’m happy for you. Everyone should be doing their bit, and if I can’t, I’m glad you’re out there. It’s better than you lazing around here, that’s for sure.”

Bucky played offended and Steve’s laugh turned into a sigh.

“Just wish I could be out there with you.”

“I’ll feel a lot better knowing you’re safe at home.”

Steve sighed again.

“I know.”

\--

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Buck.”

The smile slipped off of Bucky’s face.

“What? Why not? It’s not like it would _change_ anything.”

“I know, Buck, but.” Steve rubbed his forehead. “ _Going steady_. It makes it seem official.”

“What’s the problem with that?” Bucky seemed edgy, and Steve just wanted this conversation to be over.

“If we start pretending like this can be some long term thing, we’re only going to be disappointed,” he sighed. “It’s not acceptable, Bucky. And people are going to pick up on it, too. I don’t exactly come across as the most straight-shooting guy.”

Bucky held his tongue and blinked back tears.

“People are going to either see us as a gay couple, which would be bad, or they’re going to think I’m a girl, which.” Steve didn’t finish his sentence. He looked up pleadingly at Bucky. “Don’t make me do this.”

Bucky looked as though he had been slapped.

“Okay, Steve. Yeah. I understand.”

Bucky shouldered his coat and went to the bar.

\--

The night Bucky left, Steve took a shower.


	4. Chapter 4

“Why? Where are we going?”

“The future.”

Steve looked at the newspaper advertisement and smirked.

“World Exposition?”

“Yeah, Stark Expo’s gonna be there. We’ll get to see Howard Stark, in the flesh!”

Steve shook his head fondly and looked up at Buck, taking a moment to appreciate how he looked in his uniform.

“You like what you see?” Bucky did a small twirl and sent Steve a wink. “I might see if I can keep it afterwards, if you’re lucky.”

“So, uh. Will it just be me and you tonight?”

“Nah,” Bucky took back the newspaper and folded it up under his arm. “Promised a coupla dames from the bar that they could tag along.”

“This isn’t a date, right, Buck?”

“What? Just because we aren’t going steady means I can’t take my best guy out for a night on the town?”

“Bucky, I’m serious.”

Bucky’s smile slid a little and he glanced away.

“Sure thing, pal. No date.”

\--

Bucky fought off a cringe throughout the whole evening. He may have lied to both parties on this one. Connie and Bonnie had apparently been wanting to go out on a nice date for _ages_ , but hadn’t been able to find the beards for it. When Bucky heard that they were interested in the Expo, he told them that he’d be there with a guy on his arm, and, while he did technically deliver, it wasn’t exactly turning out as he’d hoped.

Bucky may have given Steve the impression that the girls were there for him.

Bonnie had sent Bucky a questioning look when Steve started flirting with her, and Connie was looking none-too-happy about it, either. It took all of Bucky’s willpower not to give up on the night altogether and head on home.

Bucky had thought things were going okay by the time Howard Stark was on stage. The girls seemed to have gotten over Steve’s advancements and were giggling happily together, clutching each other’s arms. Bucky was keeping an eye on Steve, and, while the little guy looked a bit dejected, at least he was _there_ on Bucky’s last night. That was all Bucky could ask for.

\--

Bucky had apparently been wrong about keeping an eye on Steve.

“You really gonna do this again?”

Steve looked startled at Bucky’s approach, and sheepishly turned away from the enlistment booth.

“Well, it’s a fair.” He tried for casual and missed. “I’m gonna try my luck.”

“As who? Steve from Ohio? They’ll catch you. Worse, they’ll actually take you.”

When Bucky had first realised that Steve must have started falsifying his enlistment forms on multiple levels, he had gone mad with worry. He was used to Steve getting himself into trouble, but that was usually with thugs on the streets. This was the government. Bucky couldn’t protect Steve from the government.

“Look, I know you don’t think I can do this.” There was accusation in Steve’s voice and Bucky knew immediately what he was talking about.

“This isn’t a back alley, Steve. It’s a war!”

“I know it’s a war,” Steve sulked. “You don’t have to tell me.”

Bucky sighed.

“Why are you so keen to fight? There are so many important jobs.”

Steve rolled his eyes.

“What am I gonna do? Collect scrap metal –“

“Yes!”

“– in my little red wagon?” Steve sent Bucky a challenging stare.

“Why not?” He didn’t sound convincing, even to himself. They both knew where Steve would be put: in a women’s factory, not in a scrap yard.

“I’m not gonna sit in a factory, Bucky.” Bucky rolled his eyes and Steve huffed out a laugh. “Bucky, come on!” His tone suddenly changed. “There are men laying down their lives. I got no right to do any less than them. That’s what you don’t understand. This isn’t about me.” Steve sent Bucky a meaningful look.

“Right,” Bucky scoffed. “’Cause you’ve got nothing to prove.”

Steve took a slight step back and straightened out his shoulders. Bucky immediately regretted his low-blow. Besides, he’d promised he wouldn’t try to stop Steve from enlisting. He sighed, resigned.

“Don’t do anything stupid until I get back.”

“How can I? You’re taking all the stupid with you.”

Steve’s face was fighting off a smile. Bucky really wanted to kiss him, one last time, before he left.

He hugged him instead.

\--

Connie and Bonnie had looked at him questioningly when he returned sans Steve. He’d just shrugged and sent them a sad smile, and thankfully they didn’t say anything.

\--

Steve shuffled nervously in the exam room. This was only the fifth time he’d gotten past the enlistment forms. It was always worse when they found out through the medical.

Steve had also realised, as Bucky was fond of pointing out, that he couldn’t keep falsifying his enlistment forms. The only reason he hadn’t been caught out yet was because of how shocking everyone seemed to find his vagina.

To Steve’s surprise, the man who entered the room didn’t seem to care about the fact that Steve was a dirty liar, or even about the fact that he wasn’t biologically male. He had all of Steve’s enlistment forms in his hand; he could see the stamps, the notes. He had to know.

“There are already so many big men fighting this war,” the man sighed. “Maybe what we need now is the little guy, huh?”

The quirk of his eyebrow was too intelligent for it to be otherwise.

\--

Steve was accepted.

\--

_ The List _

_~~\- Mom~~ _

_\- Bucky_

_\- Becca_

_\- Dr Erskine_

\--

Steve had a hard time at the training camp. Steve thought he did a pretty good job of passing, thank you very much, even without Bucky there for validation. Unfortunately, Colonel Phillips had a sharper eye than most.

“Doctor, why is there a _woman_ in my camp?”

Erskine slid his glasses down his nose and looked thoroughly unimpressed.

“ _He_ is one of the potential candidates for the super-soldier serum.” He turned back to his book. “Besides, I think if you look to your right just a little, you will see that there is already a woman in your camp.”

Phillips turned to see Agent Carter monitoring the recruits’ push-ups. If he looked a little _more_ to his right, he could see Rogers struggling to keep up with them.

“Doctor, this is unacceptable. She’s hardly –“

“ _He_ ,” the doctor repeated, more harshly this time. “He is a man, Colonel, just like the rest of them, and you will refer to him as such. And he is staying.”

Phillips made a frustrated gurgle of assent.

“Fine.” He pointed a finger at Erskine. “But I’m not happy about it.”

\--

None of the other recruits ever found out, which was probably for the best. They gave Steve a hard enough time _without_ knowing anything about him.

The Colonel had discreetly relocated Steve to an otherwise empty barrack, and had yelled at any of the soldiers who had the audacity to ask about it.

Steve supposed there was that to be thankful for.

\--

_ The List _

_~~\- Mom~~ _

_\- Bucky_

_\- Becca_

_\- Dr Erskine_

_\- Colonel Phillips_

\--

Steve liked Peggy, and Peggy seemed to like him as well, which was unusual. She was the first person to show an interest in Steve of that kind since Bucky.

Steve sometimes wondered if she knew. She was a smart girl, but Steve had never been friends with many of those, and so didn’t know much about them. At any rate, Peggy was sharp and powerful and independent, and seemed impressed that Steve thought as much.

“Most men think I have no place here,” she said. “I’m glad that you’re different.”

“Women are no different from the rest of us, ma’am,” Steve had stuttered. Peggy smirked.

“Right you are.”

\--

Everyone turned to stare at Steve as he walked into the laboratory for the talk-through. It was a little overwhelming.

Steve really hadn’t expected to be selected for the super soldier program. Erskine had always seemed to have high hopes for Steve, but others, like Colonel Phillips, whose opinions had some weight in this area, seemed reluctant.

Steve also hadn’t expected the amount of paperwork and discussions he would have to deal with prior to the actual procedure.

Erskine did his best to make Steve feel comfortable before he began explaining to him the functions of what looked like a giant metallic coffin. Steve was apparently supposed to get into it, at some point.

“And, uh.” The doctor looked nervous. “You will have to take off your shirt.”

“Okay,” Steve blinked. “That shouldn’t be a problem.”

Erskine walked over to him and unbuttoned the first few on Steve’s shirt.

“I also mean this.” He pulled up the shoulder strap on Steve’s binder.

“Oh.”

“We won’t do anything you’re uncomfortable with, Steven. You don’t have to go through with this procedure.”

Steve set his jaw.

“No, I’ll do it.”

Erskine smiled.

“Good man.”

\--

Howard Stark, of all people, was one of the scientists that Steve had to talk to.

“ _Bucky would have a fit_ ,” Steve thought.

Howard didn’t seem to care about Steve in general, let alone his gender, but found the whole thing fascinating on a scientific level. He speculated on how the procedure would go, and sometimes asked some intrusive questions, but was generally quite polite.

“You know, it’s really fascinating stuff,” he said, circling Steve and rubbing his chin. “I was wondering if you could answer some questions for me, about your feelings and whatnot, before and after the experiment. I mean, as long as that’s fine with you.”

“That’s fine.” Steve was a little overwhelmed by the whole situation, and Howard seemed to notice.

“I’ll let you rest up, champ. See you tomorrow?”

Steve nodded dumbly.

The rest of the scientists working on Steve were perfectly comfortable staring openly whenever he walked past, like he was some kind of freak show. Steve would just raise his chin higher and keep walking.

\--

Peggy had seemed a little shocked when she first saw Erskine reveal the binder, though she didn’t give any indication of it afterwards.

She seemed thoughtful on the car ride home.

“I hope all those idiots don’t think this is some miracle medicine to cure man of woman once and for all,” she said bitterly.

“Which idiots?”

Peggy made an expansive gesture.

“Those scientists, the spectators. Bunch of idiot men, I tell you.”

“Spectators?”

“Oh, government agents, that sort of thing.” She smiled at him. “You’re making quite the story, Steve.”

Steve was beginning to worry that the list was getting too long.

\--

_ The List _

_~~\- Mom~~ _

_\- Bucky_

_\- Becca_

_\- Dr Erskine_

_\- Colonel Phillips_

_\- Howard Stark (TELL BUCKY!!)_

_\- Peggy_

_\- government agents (??)_

_\- every goddamn scientist this side of Brooklyn_


	5. Chapter 5

Steve’s new body was big and clumsy and right.

The weight took the most getting used to. It threw Steve off his balance, causing him to fall into tables, chairs, and, once, a window. He also had to rethink his scrappy fighting style: his body wasn’t so easy to defend anymore. He was a gigantic walking target. Good thing he packed a punch.

And yet, at the same time, it almost felt like it had always been there. Steve had always had the ghost of this body surrounding him wherever he went. It finally felt like he fit.

That’s not to say that Steve didn’t sometimes miss his old body. He felt like he’d lost something, somehow. He often caught himself hunching his shoulders or slouching to try to fill up less space and slip back into the familiar. Steve had never felt so lost.

Steve had never felt so himself.

\--

The skin-tight suit that they made Steve wear was unflattering towards his privates, so they made him put shorts over the top of it, as well. He still felt terribly exposed.

He had the niggling thought that this wasn’t what Erskine would have wanted, but Brandt was adamant that this was doing _something_ to help the war effort, so Steve decided to believe him.

\--

_ The List _

_~~\- Mom~~ _

_\- Bucky_

_\- Becca_

_~~\- Dr Erskine~~ _

_\- Colonel Phillips_

_\- Howard Stark (TELL BUCKY!!)_

_\- Peggy_

_\- government agents (??)_

_\- every goddamn scientist this side of Brooklyn_

\--

They’d wanted him to be in movies. The directors had been frustrated at first, but his acting had gradually improved. Steve still got embarrassed sitting in cinemas and watching himself bumble around on-screen. Bucky had always been the better actor, the better liar.

Steve wished that Bucky was with him now.

\--

“What about you, Barnes?”

Bucky looked up from where he’d been picking absent-mindedly at some dirt caked onto his jacket.

“Huh?”

“You got a dame back home?” Dugan smirked.

“Uh, kind of?”

“’Kind of’?”

“Well, we aren’t exactly going steady.”

The Commandos gave him sympathetic glances and shoulder pats.

“She’ll come around,” said Jones.

“ _Not so sure he will_ ,” Bucky thought.

“This girl got a name?” Morita chimed in.

“Uh, yeah.” Bucky hesitated. “Stevie.”

\--

Steve was fed up. He’d been called a girl more times than he could count today, including by Colonel Phillips. “Tinker Bell”, “sweetheart”, and “chorus girl” had been spat in his face like venom, and it stung. Peggy wouldn’t let him lie to himself about his uselessness in the war effort anymore, and, to top it all off, Bucky had gotten himself caught doing something stupid and was either suffering in some POW camp somewhere, or was already dead.

Steve was fed up with doing what he was told.

\--

Bucky thought he was dreaming when he woke up and saw Steve – the _real_ Steve – fully touchable and hovering right over him.

He didn’t really think it could be real. After all, he was on a fair variety of drugs.

“I thought you were smaller.” Bucky appreciated Steve’s new body. “What happened to you?”

“I joined the army.”

“Did it hurt?”

“A little.”

Bucky wet his lips hesitantly.

“Is it – is it permanent?”

Bucky thought Steve’s smile held the fraction of a promise.

“So far.”

\--

Bucky sat huddled with Steve long after everyone else had finished their celebrations.

“So what – what exactly are the changes?”

Steve chuckled.

“I’m just a whole lot bigger, Buck. They still had to give me a binder and all that.”

Bucky nodded thoughtfully.

“So, uh.” He nodded again, more forcefully. “You and Carter?”

Steve blushed.

“I – no! No, Bucky, nothing’s happened there, we’re not –“

“Do you like her?”

Steve turned away.

“A little.”

Bucky swallowed back some tears and then dumbly nodded again.

“Does she know?”

Steve nodded. _Damn it._

“I really like her, Buck.”

Bucky shivered a little in the cold and imagined Steve putting an arm around him, pulling him in to his now furnace-like warmth.

“ _I still like you more though_ ,” he’d whisper. Bucky would shiver again, for a different reason.

“ _Come to my tent?_ ” he’d say. Steve would grin and nod and let Bucky explore his new body. They’d curl into one another against the cold and wake up the next morning with messy hair and blissed-out faces, and everybody would know but nobody would care. Steve would keep that costume, like he’d promised, and the war would end and they would go back home and finally, _finally_ , be happy.

“You cold?” Steve actually asked. “Wait here, I’ll see if I can get you some more coffee.”

Bucky sat alone on the step for fifteen minutes and then went to bed.

\--

“Stevie, did you say her name was?”

Bucky jumped and blushed as he realised how long he must have been looking at Steve.

“Uh, yeah.”

Dugan gave him a knowing smile and walked away.

\--

Bucky pointed an angry finger at Steve’s chest.

“Why did I have to hear from _Brock Isley_ , of all people, that they’d been giving you trouble?”

“It was nothing, Buck, just a few –“

“ _Slurs_?”

Steve rebalanced himself.

“Well, that too.”

Bucky huffed and walked away.

He returned half an hour later, rubbing his fist.

“You tell me when anyone gives you trouble, alright?”

“Buck, I –“

“ _Alright_?”

“Alright.”

Isley walked past with a blood nose.

\--

“Sergeant Barnes.”

Bucky quickly lifted his head, swearing when he hit it on the low doorframe. Agent Carter smirked as she stepped into his line of sight.

“Jesus, you scared me.”

“Steve has told me a lot about you, you know.”

Bucky nervously glanced away.

“How much would that be, exactly?”

Peggy smiled sadly.

“I’m not an idiot, Barnes. I’m in love with him, too. I can recognise it in other people.”

Bucky ran a hand through his hair.

“So, you and him - ?”

“No,” she said. “Nothing yet.”

Bucky nodded.

“You’re pleased to hear that.” She smirked when Bucky tried to disagree. “No, I would be, too, if it was the other way around.”

Bucky sighed.

“He likes you, too, you know,” he admitted.

“I was going to say the same to you.”

Bucky raised his eyebrows and turned away. They looked over the camp in silence.

\--

A journalist came onto camp the camp a couple of weeks later, eager to talk with Captain America and his team. He’d also been very excited at the prospect of talking to someone who had known the star-spangled man since childhood.

He never published the interview.

“Oh, I’m happy for him, by all means,” Bucky grinned. “This is – I’m just glad that he can be who he really is. Or, who he always was, I guess. Just now other people can see it too.” Bucky frowned. “That annoys me, though. All these idiots wouldn’t have given him a second glance if they’d met him before all this super soldier junk. He was just as special then. But only to me. Like, privately special. Now I got all these people fawning all over him. It’s like I have to share him out or something, like I’m not the one who’s been there the whole time.”

Bucky laughed and shook his head before continuing, somewhat sombre.

“So, yeah, I guess I do miss the little guy. The good thing about the little guy was that he would never have been able to get into the war. It’s too dangerous for him out here. I stand by that. He has no proper training, you know that? They pump him up with a bunch of steroids and then he thinks he can come out here and just punch people in the face. It doesn’t work like that. He tried telling me he _did_ have training, you know. I trained him a little bit when we first heard about the war. Just boxing, that kind of thing. I thought he just wanted to bulk up a bit, that sort of thing. That’s what he told me, anyway, but turns out he thinks that was some sort of legitimate fight school. Can you believe it?”

Bucky laughed again, more bitter this time.

“I was gonna take my next opportunity to go home, too. I might sound like a real deserter, but that’s the truth. I wanted to get back home. I’d got my money, I’d seen a little portion of the world, I’d sat in a trench rotting for days on end. I just wanted to get home to Stevie and do something else. But then, he’d actually _shown up_ here. I have to stick around and watch out for his punk ass, you know? He doesn’t look around, see where he’s going. He’s too scrappy. He likes fighting, which I guess is part of the problem. He goes in too easily. He’s lucky I’m a crack shot. The number of times I’ve had to get a gun off his back –“

Bucky paused, his lips turned ever so slightly up, eyes glazed over in reminiscence. He shook his head and resumed.

“Anyway, I oughta be going home, really. After what HYDRA did to me –“

Bucky snapped his mouth shut.

“Sergeant Barnes?”

“That’s enough of that. Obviously haven’t had anyone to talk to in a very long time.” He laughed nervously.

Bucky refused to answer any more questions.


	6. Chapter 6

“Bit plain,” Bucky said, inspecting the new shield. “You should draw up a design, get someone to paint it.”

Steve nodded blandly. He seemed as though his mind was somewhere else. Bucky tried to ignore it.

“Already got some scratches on it though, ya clutz.” He ran his hands gently over the small burnishes on the metal. His brow furrowed. “Hang on, is this _gunpowder_?”

“That was Peggy, not me.”

“She _fired_ at you?” Bucky looked halfway between being amused and getting ready to find Peggy and fire a few bullets himself.

“It was my fault, Buck.”

“What have you done this time, punk?” Bucky settled for amused, positioning himself more languidly with his arms stretched behind his neck.

“I, uh.” Steve swallowed. “I kissed Private Lorraine.”

Bucky sat forward.

“You _what_?”

“She pulled me into the corner and started kissing me! I had nothing to do with it!” Steve’s words tumbled out. “And then Peggy showed up, and.”

“Yeah, well I can see why.” Bucky angrily ran a hand over the shield again.

“Bucky, it wasn’t my fault.”

“So, let me get this straight. A 100lb girl pulls _Captain America_ in for a kiss, and he is helpless to do anything about it.” Bucky scoffed. “Sorry, pal. Might’ve believed that a coupla months ago, but not today.”

Steve sighed and ran a hand through his hair.

“You’re right, Buck. I should’ve been more forceful. I have to take some of the blame here.” He looked at Bucky with sincerity. “Sorry.”

“Not me you need to be apologising to, pal.”

Steve smiled, a melancholy little thing.

“I kind of think it is.”

He left Bucky with a kiss on his lips and a question in the air.

\--

“I understand, Steve.”

“Then why are you still angry?”

Peggy kept walking briskly. Steve couldn’t weave his way through a crowd so easily anymore. He had to keep stopping to apologise to people he accidentally hit with his broad shoulder.

“Peggy!”

Peggy eventually stopped, sighed, and turned to fix Steve’s tie.

“I’m not angry at you, Steve. I was, but now you’ve come and apologised and it’s okay.”

“It doesn’t seem like it.”

Peggy raised an eyebrow at him and seemed to consider her next words carefully.

“You aren’t in the blame in this situation, Steve. You probably could have done a little more about it, but it wasn’t your doing.”

“But I’m –“

“Captain America, yes, we all know that, thank you.” Her hands went slack on the tie and she sighed. “I’m about to be very honest with you, Steve.”

“Alright.”

“Private Lorraine and I used to be –“ She closed her eyes. “We used to have something along the lines of you and Bucky.”

Steve’s eyes widened.

“Oh.”

“She’s always been a manipulative sort of person, so I broke it off. I knew there was bad blood there, but I thought we’d recovered sufficiently to move on with our lives. Apparently not.” Peggy glared in the general direction of Lorraine’s office. “She kissed you because she wanted to make me jealous. And she kissed _you_ , specifically, because she knows that I like you. Very much.”

“Oh.”

Steve was forcefully kissed by a woman for the second time that day.

\--

“You aren’t a virgin, are you, Steve?”

Peggy was working quickly at his buttons and Steve was feeling a little lost for words.

“Uh, no, I’m not, actually.”

“Good.” She gave Steve a wry smirk. “I didn’t want to be the one to spoil the purity of America’s golden boy.”

\--

Sleeping with Peggy was like letting go. She knew what she was doing, and she was always in control. It was soothing, in a way, her words reassuring and smoothing out the rough edges of the day.

It was completely different to Bucky.

Bucky had known what he was doing, too, but with less professionalism. He had given the control over to Steve, had let Steve know that he could do whatever he liked. Bucky had completely laid himself out for him. And when he spoke, the dirty things that came out of that mouth were still enough to make Steve blush.

Sleeping with Bucky was like holding on.

\--

Steve looked at Peggy as she sat on the edge of the mattress, fixing her hair.

“Peggy?”

“Hm?” She half-turned, pins still in-between her lips.

“You know I’m not a woman, right?”

Peggy took the pins out of her mouth and let go of her progress so that she could lay her hand over Steve’s. She gave him a reassuring smile.

“Of course I do, Steve.” She turned around and picked up where she’d left off. “You can like both, you know.”

Steve smiled.

“I know.”

\--

“So, you and Carter, huh?”

The smoke from Bucky’s cigarette curled up into the cool night air. He was smoking more now, Steve noticed. He wondered if it had anything to do with him.

“Yeah.”

Bucky’s face seemed wet in the starlight.

“Okay.”

\--

Steve remembered being pressed flush against Bucky as he screamed and laughed around the bends. He’d looked at Steve with lazy love in the late afternoon glow. He’d doubled over laughing when Steve vomited into the bushes afterwards. Steve scowled.

“You’re the one always telling me you’re not a piece of glass,” he said in response to Steve’s protests. Steve scowled again and Bucky pulled him into a rough hug. “Aw, I’m sorry. C’mon. When you’re feeling up for it, I’ll shout you a hot dog.”

Bucky had used his good aim to win Steve a giant bear, and they’d eaten candy floss behind the sideshows. They’d gotten different flavours.

“Want a taste?” Bucky teased.

They kissed against the wall.

Bucky eventually talked Steve into going into the Tunnels of Love. The crowds hollered at them and laughed when Bucky waved back. Steve was hurt and amused and in love.

They kissed again in the tunnels, with Steve’s hand down Bucky’s pants.

Bucky still tasted like candy floss.

\--

Steve never did get around to introducing him to Howard Stark.

\--

_ The List _

_~~\- Mom~~ _

_~~\- Bucky~~ _

_\- Becca_

_~~\- Dr Erskine~~ _

_\- Colonel Phillips_

_\- Howard Stark ~~(TELL BUCKY!!)~~_

_\- Peggy_

_\- government agents (??)_

_\- every goddamn scientist this side of Brooklyn_


	7. Chapter 7

When Steve had taken the plane down, he hadn’t ever wanted to wake up again. Someone had woken him up anyway.

\--

Steve hadn’t felt anything since Bucky fell. All of his grief had been channeled into recklessness, a desire for revenge and, failing that, death. He thought he’d gotten both. The relief of turning the nose down had sickened him. It shouldn’t be so easy to leave everyone behind.

Clearly, it wasn’t.

\--

“I’m afraid all of your friends are dead, Cap.”

Steve sat rigid in Director Fury’s office. He didn’t want to be having this conversation. He didn’t want to be there at all.

“All of them?”

“Well, Agent Carter’s still alive, but a little worse for wear, I’m afraid. She doesn’t remember much.”

Steve didn’t respond.

“She was integral to building S.H.I.E.L.D., you know. Even named it after you. But you’ll find all that out. I’ll have some files sent to you. You can read up.”

Fury shuffled some papers on his desk. Steve looked over his shoulder at the unfamiliar skyline. His world had dropped out from underneath him.

“Now, about the Avengers Initiative I told you about –“

“I decline.”

Fury raised his eyebrows.

“Alright, then. We’ll give you some time to grieve. This is all very different for you. I understand. Must be a big shock.”

Steve shrugged.

“We’ll be in contact, anyway, making sure you have all you need to settle into your life again.” Fury suddenly grew more solemn and reached across the table. “It’s gonna be hard, Cap, but you need to get yourself back out there. Don’t let yourself slip away again.”

Steve paused for a moment before standing.

“Will that be all, sir?”

Fury looked slightly hesitant, but it was hard to tell.

“No, not quite.” He gestured to the seat. “You may want to sit down again for this one.”

“I can stand.”

“Suit yourself.” Fury tapped his fingers on the table. “When we found you, and thawed you out, we had to do some medical checks, that sort of thing. That involved taking your clothes off.”

Steve didn’t move.

“There were only a few of our scientists there at the time,” Fury sighed. “They reported back to me, and we’ve kept that information between us.”

Steve nodded.

“That sort of thing’s more acceptable now, Cap. We can provide you with resources and support if you –“

“Thank you, sir.” Steve straightened up to leave. “But I can get by on my own.”

\--

It was only once Steve was sitting in his unfamiliar apartment that he realised he would have to start all over again.

\--

_ The List _

_\- Director Fury_

_\- S.H.I.E.L.D. scientists_

\--

Steve left his apartment for the first time to go and see Peggy.

She was worse than Steve had expected. He sat in the chair next to her cot and smiled sadly at her illogical babble. She held his hand. He rubbed his thumb back and forth over the papery flesh and vowed to visit her as often as he could.

“Uh, Peg.”

She smiled over at him absently. He took a deep breath.

“Do you – do you remember much about us?” he tried. Peggy’s face became washed with clarity. She squeezed his hand.

“Steve, I remember _everything_.”

The moment was gone.

\--

_ The List _

_\- Director Fury_

_\- S.H.I.E.L.D. scientists_

_\- Peggy_

\--

Steve had eventually given in to the Avengers Initiative. He could feel himself getting better. The world wasn’t quite so confusing anymore, and he could forget everything when he was punching something. Fury thought that could be put to better use than ruining every punching bag S.H.I.E.L.D. owned.

Steve didn’t mind the rest of the team. He got on well with some of them, and tolerated the others, and so it worked. They all seemed to forget that, a couple of months ago, Steve had been in the war. They all seemed to forget that everyone that Steve had ever cared about was long gone. They all seemed to forget how quickly everything had changed for him.

He couldn’t blame them, really. There were more important things to care about, such as the alien invasion in NYC.

Natasha had the closest affiliation to S.H.I.E.L.D. Steve could tell by her regular check-ups on his well-being, usually through well-meaning inquiries into his love life. She seemed to believe that his relationship status had some bearing on his mental health. Steve didn’t see anything working out any time in the future.

Natasha was very pretty, and he got along with her best out of anyone on the team, and Thor was definitely very attractive, and Tony certainly seemed interested, but there were things about him that they didn’t know, and he wasn’t sure how they’d respond.

Steve had lost his two chances, and he wasn’t about to get another one.

\--

The next time Steve met up with the Avengers, after they’d eaten shawarma and Steve had gone and taken a post-battle nap, much to Nat’s amusement, it was so that Tony and Bruce could conduct something along the lines of a medical. Tony had seemed antsy since he’d gone through that black hole. He always needed to have people around him, always needed to be doling out his excess cash or knowledge onto them, helping them so that he could try to help himself. Steve wasn’t one to deny him that.

Steve had volunteered first for the medical. Tony had jokingly reassured them that they wouldn’t need to take any of their clothes off, so Steve didn’t see how it could go wrong.

Medical knowledge had advanced a lot since Steve had last been in this situation.

“Name: Steven Grant Rogers;” JARVIS began, “biological age: 30; born: 4 July 1918; chromosomes: XX;”

The room suddenly felt too small.

“Is anything the matter, sir?”

Tony had uncharacteristically stopped moving around and was now staring straight at Steve’s eyes, chest, crotch, and back again.

“Uh, no, JARVIS. No problem.”

The room echoed with the silence. Steve felt out of breath for the first time since he’d taken the serum.

Tony opened his mouth to ask something, but Bruce was there first.

“You seem fine to me, Cap.” He absently flicked through some files on the computer. “That’s all. Right, Tony?”

Tony narrowed his eyes.

“Right.”

Steve’s body stepped off of the stool and sat back down next to Nat. His body watched Clint rub his hands together, heard him say “Let’s get this out of the way, then, shall we?” Steve’s body was silent.

Steve’s mind was fuzzing. He excused himself, went to his apartment, and lay down.

\--

_ The List _

_\- Director Fury_

_\- S.H.I.E.L.D. scientists_

_\- Peggy_

_\- Tony_

_\- Bruce_

_\- Clint_

_\- Natasha_

_\- Thor_

\--

Steve woke up to a soft knock on his doorframe. Natasha popped her head around.

“Hey,” she said. “You alright?”

Steve raised his eyebrows.

“I’m pretty sure I lock my front door.”

“I’m pretty sure you know me better than that by now.” Natasha came in and sat on the corner of the bed. “Anything you want to talk about?”

Steve scrubbed a hand through his bedhead and sat up.

“Not particularly?” he sighed.

Natasha sat in silence for a moment. She looked out of Steve’s window. The view was more familiar to her than it was to Steve.

“We all just want to know,” she began, “if you still want to be called Steve.”

Steve looked at her.

“Do I still -? Uh, yeah. That’s my name.”

Natasha smiled.

“Good.” She turned back to the window. “That’s good.”

Silence.

“I’m going to assume that Fury already had this talk with you, but –“

“I’m _fine_ , Natasha.”

“- there‘s heaps of stuff for you. All you have to do is ask.”

“I’ll be fine.”

Natasha raised an eyebrow.

“I’m not sure you understand how things have changed since the 40s.”

“I think I got it.”

“If you’re sure.”

“I am.”

“Okay.” Natasha stood up and left.

“That lock had better not be broken!” Steve called out. Natasha laughed.

“If it is, let me know, and I’ll get Tony to pay for it.”

Steve chuckled and went back to sleep.

\--

Natasha sent Steve a file of resources anyway.

Steve smiled at Natasha’s assumption that he knew how to work an e-mail. Tony would have brought around a box of papers.

He opened the attachments, and discovered that he had been wrong.

Steve was overwhelmed by the amount of information Natasha had sent his way. He by-passed testosterone treatments, figuring he’d practically already done that, and looked at the custom binders. They made them now. He could buy one. There were pages of information on why you should use a fabric binder, not any sort of tape or bandage, and Steve could almost hear Bucky’s proud crow of “I told you so”.

Steve started to cry.

\--

“Hey, Nat?”

“Yeah?”

“You free this afternoon? I want help picking out a binder.”

Natasha smiled.

“Sure thing.”

\--

“What was it like in the 40s, like this?” Natasha was leaning against Steve’s side as they scrolled through page after page of trans-related products. Steve had gotten emotional a grand total of three times already.

“Not as bad as you’re thinking, probably,” Steve laughed. “I had it good. I had supportive people, and then the whole super soldier serum, and, well.” He gestured to his body. Natasha smirked.

“What were you like before that?”

“Pretty scrawny, actually.” He furrowed his brows. “I think I changed a lot during the war, anyway, as a person. I’m better at planning stuff out now. I’m not as much of an idiot, I hope.”

“Oh, you’re still an idiot.”

Steve laughed and gave her shoulder a gentle shove.

“But, really. I was very obviously _different_. I was lucky I had Bucky.”

“Who?”

“Uh.” Steve hesitated. “He was my best friend. He used to always do his best to make sure I was feeling comfortable; he was always right there to get me out of trouble. People didn’t tend to question whether I was a boy or not when I had this big guy on my arm telling them that I was.”

“So, you and Bucky..?”

Steve ran a hand over his face.

“Yeah. Kind of? I dunno.”

Natasha nodded.

“What happened to him? Do you know?”

Steve swallowed.

“He, uh. He died. During the war. Fell off a train. It was my fault.”

Natasha rubbed his arm.

“It wasn’t, Steve. Don’t tell yourself that.”

“I could have grabbed him. Ugh.” He wiped his eyes. “Sorry.”

Natasha sat rubbing Steve’s arm until he stopped crying, and then they bought a binder.

\--

When the binder came in the mail, Natasha came over to help Steve getting it on.

“Is this what you were using?” She held up the tatty old thing between her thumb and forefinger. It was falling apart at the seams.

“Yeah, they gave that to me in the USO.” Steve’s voiced was muffled within the binder. “I had one that Bucky’s sister made me that was a bit better, but it didn’t fit anymore after the serum.” Steve wriggled around. “God, this thing is _tight_.”

“That’s the point, Steve,” Natasha laughed. Steve’s head was still inside the middle of the binder, his arms struggling to pull it down over the lower half of his torso. He took a step back and went tumbling over the bed and into the table.

Natasha couldn’t stop laughing.

“Tony’ll pay for that.”


	8. Chapter 8

“You guys can’t just _use_ my money,” Tony said. He was comically grumpy and Natasha couldn’t help nudging Steve and giggling.

Tony had called an intervention. Thor looked to be the only one taking it seriously.

“How did you get my account number, anyway?”

Steve raised his eyebrows at Natasha.

“ _It was Clint_ ,” she mouthed. Steve’s eyebrows rose further.

“You all have your own S.H.I.E.L.D. bank account. You get _paid_ to do what most people would pay _for_ : hanging out with me. So use your own damn money.”

Steve did have a lot of money in his bank account. An absurd amount, really, even by today’s standards. He should feel guilty for leeching off of Tony so often.

It was Natasha’s fault, anyway. Usually.

“Before you ask, I _do_ get paid by S.H.I.E.L.D. as well. But because I am already so filthily rich it doesn’t matter to me at all, so technically I’m the only one here saving the world purely out of the goodness of my own arc-run heart. Feel bad.”

Natasha loudly popped her gum.

“And, just so you know, I can see what you’re buying, too.” Tony picked up his Stark tablet and began scrolling casually through it. “Your arrows are unreasonably expensive for how often they get lost on a mission, Birdman.”

Clint shrugged and took a deep suck from his juice box.

“Thor doesn’t really seem to be buying anything that I can see. Probably because you have some weird foreign currency exchange on Asgard, right?”

“Actually, we –“

“Right.” Tony kept scrolling down the list. “Oh, wow.” He looked genuinely surprised. “Natasha, I don’t know whether to be disgusted or impressed that you felt comfortable buying a _dildo_ with my money.”

Natasha popped her gum again.

“You can’t see who bought what on that, can you, Stark?”

Tony narrowed his eyes.

“No, why?”

“Because that wasn’t me.”

Tony’s eyes widened and he set down the tablet.

“Well, that’s enough of that for today.” He clapped his hands. “If you want to use my money, _ask_ me, alright? I’m a generous soul. No need for sneaky business.”

Steve and Natasha started laughing.

\--

“The binder you bought is shit.”

“God, Tony. What the hell?” Steve stepped back from the punching bag and started unwrapping the bandages around his hands. “Natasha picked the binder.”

“What would she know?” Tony threw Steve a black bundle and Steve reflexively grabbed it.

“What would you know, is also a valid question,” Steve muttered. He unfolded the fabric. “Are you serious, Tony?”

The bundle was a binder, complete with Stark Industries logo.

“I did a lot of research,” Tony rambled. “Comes complete with back support. Completely stream-lined, flexible, breathable, compression like you wouldn’t believe, _great_ for working out. Which you do a lot, might I point out. You’re welcome.”

Steve turned it over in his hands.

“When did you do this?”

“Started it as soon as I found out, big boy.” Tony helped himself to a seat. “I was in the middle of it when you bought one with _my money_. Really, Cap, I’m offended you didn’t come to me first.”

Steve smiled.

“Thanks, Tony.” He tucked the binder into his bag and frowned. “Is the binder I bought really that bad?”

“It’s alright. Just not made by me.”

Steve laughed and slung his bag over his shoulder, Tony trailing behind him as he strode away.

“So what did you use in the 40s? Bet you were a bandage kinda guy, huh?”

“I was for a bit,” Steve cringed. “I got talked out of it though. If you wanted a binder, you made it yourself, back in my day.”

“Hey, my one’s handmade,” Tony protested. “Handmade by a machine, but handmade. What’d you wear? How’d you pass?”

Steve huffed and hefted his bag a little higher.

“You’re a lot like your dad, you know.”

“Yeah, great, Stark family reunion, answer my question.”

“I mainly stole a lot of Bucky’s clothes, I guess.” Steve shrugged. “Whenever he grew out of them, I’d take it. Usually required a bit of altering to fit me. I was pretty little. He caught me doing it a couple of times. Thought it was hilarious when I tried on some of the bigger stuff.”

“Bucky?”

Steve stopped walking.

“Bucky was.” He shook his head and smiled, looked Tony in the eye. “Bucky was my boyfriend.”

\--

Steve was starting to feel a lot better.

He still wasn’t _happy_ , but he was better. He was catching up with the 21st century, he was living his life somewhat weaned from S.H.I.E.L.D., and he was staying occupied. He had friends, friends who _knew_ and were supportive, and he was thinking that maybe, just maybe, it could be possible for him to get out there on the dating field again. Though he’d never tell Natasha that.

Nat had lain off suggesting potential girlfriends for a while, but had started up again recently, now with bonus potential boyfriends. Steve turned her down every time. He kept an eye out for himself.

Steve’s neighbour Sharon was very pretty, and sweet, and they flirted from time to time. Natasha recommended her too regularly for Steve’s personal comfort, and so he left it at that.

\--

“Did I interrupt something?” Natasha asked with a smirk as Steve wound up the window.

“I dunno.” Steve couldn’t keep the smile off his face, so he hid it with his fist. “Maybe?”

“Aw. You’ll be cute together.” She turned the corner. “Did you get a number?”

“No.”

“Ugh, Steve. Sometimes you really show your age.”

Steve rolled his eyes.

“Don’t worry,” she continued. “If you got a name, we can get a number.”

“I’m not going to stalk him, Nat.”

“Please tell me you at least got a name.”

“Yeah.” Steve smiled again. “Sam Wilson.”

“ _Steve Wilson…_ ” Natasha said, mockingly dreamy.

“Knock it off.” Steve gave her a small shove. “But, he’s nice. He understood things, you know? He was a soldier, too. He gets things that you guys just can’t, I guess. And he didn’t make fun of me for being an _old man_.”

“Hey, you know I’m joking.”

“I do.” He gave her a fond smile. “Yeah, and he works at the VA and –“

“How long did you talk to him?”

“Shut up.” He rubbed his forehead. “Long enough to make myself look like an outdated idiot, I guess.”

“Why, what’d you say?”

“The internet is ‘very helpful’.”

Natasha laughed for too long to give the briefing.

\--

Steve didn’t end up asking Sam out on a date.

Natasha had sent him an infographic about modern dating that he’d only glanced over. He already knew that he couldn’t do it.

Too often Steve found himself wondering what the point was. He would be sitting on the subway, or at a restaurant, or even in a meeting, and everything would suddenly fade away into background noise, meaningless matter in Steve’s meaningless life. Steve knew he should feel motivated, he really should, especially considering that his job was literally saving the human race. But, he just _didn’t_.

Steve was thankful that he didn’t feel like he had on the plane anymore. He didn’t want it to be over with. He didn’t _want_ to be dead. He just didn’t so much want to be alive, either.

Sam was far too well put-together for Steve.

More than that, Steve still sometimes found himself thinking about Bucky. He didn’t know why. Maybe it was because that was where he stored all of his regrets. Whenever he zoned out, let his pencil go where it wanted, there was Bucky, grinning up at him from the page.

Steve hid him in his bottom drawer.

He made a booking with one of Sam’s sessions instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'll let you decide for yourself who bought the dildo
> 
> also!! the next chapter will (probably) be the last one!! hooray we're almost there


	9. Chapter 9

“So, did you and Bucky ever sleep together?”

Steve rubbed his eyes.

Their mission the night before had gone later than expected. They’d wound up near Clint’s apartment and he’d invited them in enthusiastically for a sleepover. Steve now regretted his decision to accept the offer.

“What do you think, Banner? Is Steve a virgin or a cock-slut?”

Bruce raised his hands.

“I already told you, I don’t want anything to do with this.” He removed himself and his bowl of cereal to a far corner of the room. Steve sighed.

“I _did_ sleep with Bucky.”

Tony made a mock gasp of disgust.

“He’s _impure_!”

Steve rolled his eyes.

“Bucky Barnes?” Clint said. Steve could tell from his expression that something bad was coming. “More like _Fuck_ y Barnes.”

He snorted loudly at his own joke and Natasha groaned in a way that made it clear to everyone in the room that she was very long-suffering. Clint kept chuckling and muttering “Fucky” to himself until Nat flicked his spoon out of his cereal.

“Hey!” He looked despondently at the milk spilt on the floor. “Aw.”

“Did you sleep with anyone else, Rogers?”

Steve narrowed his eyes at Tony’s too-casual tone.

“I did, for a matter of fact.”

“How many?”

“C’mon, Cap, give us a headcount,” Clint called out.

“Two, altogether.”

“Damn.”

The Avengers collectively got out their wallets.

“What’s going on?” Steve asked.

“We laid wages on your love life,” Natasha said casually, as she held open her wallet for Clint to file his bills into.

“It’s really weird and invasive,” Bruce provided from his corner. He seemed to be uninvolved.

“What are we if not weird and invasive?” said Tony, giving money to Thor. “My money was on either 90-year-old virgin or absolute whore.”

“You assured me this was a common pastime on Midgard,” Thor said accusingly.

“ _Betting_ , yes.” Tony turned back to Steve. “C’mon. Not one USO showgirl caught your eye?”

Steve shook his head.

“Damn.” He wrote out a cheque for Natasha.

\--

Nat offered Steve a lift home. She had ended up with most of the money.

“What’d you bet on?”

“I know I pretend like I think you’re a prudish dinosaur,” she said, “but I’m not stupid.”

“So, what was your bet?”

“I didn’t think you were a virgin, but I was more moderate about it than Clint.” She turned a corner. “We all gave numbers, too, and on the off chance one of us got it right, it was double the money. I got it right.”

“How’d you know?”

“It seemed logical.” She shrugged. “You seem like the kind of guy who would only sleep with someone you really cared about. No one night stands, no first date business. Someone you really loved. And there are only two people I’ve heard you talk about that way.”

Steve looked out the window.

\--

Steve still visited Peggy every week. He felt closure with her. He felt sad, but he felt closure.

He still dreamed about Bucky.

\--

If the asset was let out of cryo for too long, it would remember things.

The world of green would suddenly become golden. A blond boy would take its hand and walk with it through a field. Its arm was made of flesh, not fashioned out of metal. It would lie down next to the boy on a hill, and they would laugh and point at clouds.

Sometimes, the boy was older. The boy was sometimes skinny, so skinny the asset thought he would be easy to snap and break, and sometimes big and muscular, a more difficult task. The asset knew they were the same person, somehow. It didn’t make any sense.

It made the asset’s body react in unexpected ways.

Its chest constricted, its stomach coiled. The first time it had felt it, the asset had thought it was dying. It had lain down on the operation table. The HYDRA doctors had seemed frightened and confused. That was how the asset felt.

Now, the asset found it optimal. It wouldn’t tell anyone what it was feeling. It would help the asset to continue operating. It would help the asset not to terminate.

The asset’s body started reacting in other ways, too, ways that felt both unfamiliar and completely natural.

Sometimes tears would fall from the asset’s eyes. Its handlers would immediately sedate it. The asset never struggled while the tears were falling.

It was when the asset smiled that its handlers had reason to worry.

Sometimes the boy would say a name to the asset, a name that fit, felt sad, felt right.

“Bucky,” he’d laugh. “Bucky.”

The asset would scream out another name as its handlers wrestled it into the chair, as it crushed their jaws and necks with the arm they created.

“Steve!”

\--

“Bucky?”

The pain in the asset’s chest was sharp. The world was golden.

The mission was imperative.

“Who the hell is Bucky?”

\--

“He knows me, Sam.”

“I really don’t think he does.”

Natasha looked at Steve so sadly that he knew she thought the same.

He set his jaw.

“He has to.”

\--

For the first time in seventy years, Steve felt his life had a purpose.

\--

_ The List _

_\- Director Fury_

_\- S.H.I.E.L.D. scientists_

_\- Peggy_

_\- Tony_

_\- Bruce_

_\- Clint_

_\- Natasha_

_\- Thor_

_\- Bucky (?)_

\--

The asset had been out of cryo for a long time.

He had followed the mission for a while. He stole some of his clothes. The mission never caught the asset sneaking around in his home. The asset didn’t know if this was because he was particularly good at his job, or if the mission was just an idiot.

“ _Punk_ ,” his mind provided. The word was golden. The asset stored it away.

The punk apparently had an exhibit all to himself in the Smithsonian Museum. The asset thought this was dumb and rolled his eyes. He didn’t know why he did that.

The asset saw his own face in the punk’s exhibition. He inched closer to it, cautious. It could be a trap.

The information on him was confusing, and the asset knew, somehow, that most of it was incorrect.

There was a name there.

The asset was suddenly on a train.

“ _Bucky!”_ the punk shouted.

The asset was not on the train anymore.

\--

The information that the asset knew was correct was that he was from Brooklyn. He watched the punk for a little while longer. He decided that, if the punk could not take care of himself, the winged man and the armed lady could do it for him.

He went to Brooklyn.

\--

The asset became Bucky again on the footstep of Steve’s old apartment. He found himself crying. His head hurt and his mouth felt like cotton. He vomited into the bushes.

It started to rain. He huddled into Steve’s doorway and hoped that no one lived there now. The sun shower became hazy beyond his tears.

He shuddered.

“God, Steve, what have I done?”

\--

“Do you know me?”

Steve tried not to let any emotion show on his face as Bucky scanned him for signs of recognition. Bucky wet his lips and looked cautiously at Sam, sizing up the situation. Steve sobbed inwardly, readjusting the set of his feet. He didn’t want to have to do this, but if Bucky tried to make a break for it, he would have no choice.

Bucky met his eyes, and suddenly it all melted away into 1939. There was Bucky, with a well-worn smirk and a glint in his eye. Steve could tell he was teasing before he opened his mouth.

“Guess I’m the one with the long hair now, huh, punk?”

\--

_ The List _

_\- Director Fury_

_\- S.H.I.E.L.D. scientists_

_\- Peggy_

_\- Tony_

_\- Bruce_

_\- Clint_

_\- Natasha_

_\- Thor_

_\- Bucky ~~(?)~~ (!!)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all so much for reading! i'm so glad you all enjoyed it, and i loved reading your lovely comments!
> 
> i'm probably (definitely) going to write a sequel to this or something, probably to cope with the emotional train wreck that will be civil war, so keep an eye out
> 
> if you want to talk to me about your headcanons or anything feel free to message me at my blog [here](http://trashbucks.tumblr.com/)
> 
> thanks again :)


End file.
